


Where the Story Begins

by morganoconner



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M, Romance, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-26
Updated: 2010-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 06:57:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganoconner/pseuds/morganoconner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen discovers the cure to his insomnia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Story Begins

Every story has a beginning.

This one starts the third week after Jensen moves in.

He’s been battling the itching, restless feeling beneath his skin every night, hating the idea of disturbing his friend in Jared’s own house. He tries to ignore the tense muscles, the short breaths, the ceaseless need to _move_.

Jared figures it out soon enough, because Jared is many things, but unobservant isn’t one of them.

The first night Jensen gives up and slips out of his room, intending to go for a walk to try and wear himself out enough to sleep, he finds Jared sitting in a chair in the living room, absently petting Sadie as he flips through a book. He glances up with a smile and motions for Jensen to take the couch.

Jensen does, something like foreboding in his stomach. This is where Jared’s going to tell him he should see a doctor, or a psychiatrist, or that he should try this or that or some other thing so that he can sleep better and not keep Jared up at night.

But Jared doesn’t say any of those things. He just asks, quietly, how long Jensen’s had the insomnia, and Jensen tells him, just as softly, that he’s been fighting it on and off since he was a teenager.

Jared nods like he’s not surprised, glancing down at his book. Because he’s curious, and because he doesn’t want there to be an awkward silence, Jensen asks him what book he’s reading. He’s both surprised and amused when Jared tells him – _The Hobbit_. Tolkien is amongst Jensen’s personal favorites.

Jared’s lips quirk when Jensen tells him that, and his head tilts for a moment before he flips back to the first page. Jensen wants to laugh a little bit when the younger man starts reading the book out loud, but he’s immediately drawn in by Jared’s soft voice spinning images of a story long treasured in his mind.

He listens for maybe an hour to the steady cadence of that voice he knows so well, could probably pick out of a room of thousands, and by the time he’s spread himself out on the couch, his eyes are drooping and he’s already mostly asleep.

_“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort…”_

~*~

It becomes something like a tradition. Jensen doesn’t _always_ have trouble sleeping, but it happens often enough that three nights out of five or six, he finds himself shuffling to the living room, where, without fail, Jared always sits with his dogs curled at his feet and a book resting on his lap.

Sometimes, it only takes minutes for Jensen to fall asleep listening to Jared read. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes, they both get so engrossed in the story that he lies awake listening until Jared begins to grow hoarse, and then, without fail, he drifts off almost immediately.

But the point is, when he falls asleep listening to Jared’s voice weaving classic stories of elves and battles and epic quests – he finished _The Hobbit_ early on and just concluded _The Lord of the Rings_ the last time they wound up here – he sleeps better than he thinks he’s slept in his entire life. He doesn’t even care that he spends as much time sleeping on the couch as he does sleeping in his own bed, because honestly, Jared owns the most comfortable furniture you can find in Vancouver.

Tonight when he enters the room, he finds Jared leaning back in the chair with his eyes closed, a soft smile on his face as he listens to the rainfall outside. The dogs are wrestling together next to the fireplace, working off the energy the storm has brought with it, and the fireplace itself is lit, the fire crackling merrily and keeping the bitter cold from outside away.

Jared’s eyes open when Jensen lays down on the couch, already drawing a soft wool blanket over himself, and he holds the new book up for Jensen’s approval. The older man squints at the cover and grins. Agrees that it’s a good choice.

They settle in, and Jared’s voice begins to lull him to sleep.

_“The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses…”_

~*~

Jared gets sick in the spring. It starts off as a cold, and he works through it, pushing himself too hard because that’s what Jared does best. By the time he notices it getting too much worse, he’s already coughing up phlegm and can’t shake the tenacious fever he’s developed, and Jensen confines him to his bed before Eric can even make the call.

Jensen spends two days pulling double duty, getting all of the scenes he can do himself done in one lump, going over the script with the director to figure out where Jared’s double can take over, and both days, he collapses exhausted into bed and sleeps the sleep of the dead.

When Jared still hasn’t gotten better by the third day, Jensen tells Eric he’s taking the rest of the week off to try and get Jared back on his feet, and Eric agrees without an argument.

Jensen takes care of Jared straight through the day, bringing him medication and soup and water…whatever he needs. Jared can barely talk, his throat is so sore, and the fever is making him alternately too hot and too cold, and Jensen can tell he’s barely slept since this thing hit.

It’s when Jensen still hears him coughing and miserable at two in the morning that he goes upstairs and steals back into Jared’s room, quirking a smile at him when Jared’s eyes, too bright with the fever that’s gone down but not away, and bloodshot with the lack of sleep, light on his questioningly. He picks a book at random from Jared’s bookshelf and settles himself down on the beanbag chair in the corner of the room.

He pretends not to notice the tears of gratitude in Jared’s eyes when he opens to the first page and begins to read.

_“Everyone in Greenall Bridge knew Sam Carraclough’s Lassie. In fact, you might say that she was the best-known dog in the village – and for three reasons...”_

~*~

There’s a two month span during their summer hiatus, when Jensen goes to Richardson and Jared goes to film some low-budget thriller in LA, that Jensen barely sleeps at all. He tosses and turns every night, ends up going for long walks in the blistering heat of a Texas summer, and never manages to feel rested even when he does sleep.

He never thought he’d long to be back in Vancouver, but he misses the house, and Sadie and Harley, and the way Jared’s voice slides over him like a warm blanket, a lullaby of sounds that could be rich with meaning or nothing but gibberish, and they’d still make him feel…safe. Like he was home.

He takes to reading aloud to himself during the longest hours of darkness, and sometimes he can imagine that it’s not his own voice speaking softly into the night, but Jared’s, even if they don’t read the same types of books, even if the story doesn’t come to life behind his eyes the same way. Sometimes, it still helps a little.

_“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”_

~*~

They get spectacularly drunk after the successful completion of the first episode of the season. It’s another tradition, once they’ve had for the last five seasons, and one they plan to keep until the day the show goes off the air.

It’s when Jensen wakes up in the middle of the night, the insomnia taking over despite the fact that he’s already a little hungover, and still a little drunk on top of it, that he realizes just _how_ drunk they must have gotten, because he’s not alone in his bed. Jared’s curled up next to him, breathing evenly, one arm pillowed under his head, the other flung out toward Jensen.

The older man swallows hard, tries to move as quietly as possible to climb out of the bed. Clearly he’s not quiet enough, because Jared makes a low questioning sound, and his eyes blink open slowly. When he catches sight of Jensen, he says his name, softly, still in that puzzled tone. _Jen?_

Jensen gives him a reassuring smile, tells him to go back to sleep, but Jared’s already sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Telling Jensen to come back to bed as he reaches over and plucks a book from the nightstand, flips on the light next to it.

Jensen’s eyes are wide, and he waves a hand, telling Jared not to worry about it, but Jared is nothing if not insistent, and finally Jensen caves and lies back down on the bed. Beside him, Jared grins in triumph and flips open the book.

His low voice lulls Jensen back to sleep in moments.

_“He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees…”_

~*~

After that, Jared is oddly quiet for a few weeks. Not in a way that scares Jensen…he doesn’t distance himself, he still reads aloud every time Jensen’s insomnia keeps him awake, they still play video games together and laugh and joke around on set. But Jared seems reserved, like something’s on his mind that he doesn’t know how to bring up, and it worries Jensen, just a little.

They’re in the middle of a new book, one which Jared loves and which Jensen mocked him for at first, but not for long. It’s certainly not his favorite book, but Jared reading it makes it about a thousand times better, and he’s laying on the couch with his eyes closed, a small smile on his face, when Jared suddenly stops reading and says his name, very quietly.

Jensen cracks his eyes open, and Jared staring at him with an intensity he’s never seen in the other man’s gaze before. His heart starts beating in triple measure. He tilts his head questioningly, and without ever looking down at the book, without ever taking his gaze from Jensen, Jared recites:

_“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”_

There is a long, drawn out, agonizing silence from both men, and then Jensen stands and makes his way over to where Jared sits in his favorite chair. He tilts the younger man’s face up with a finger beneath his chin, and Jared meets his gaze unflinchingly.

When Jensen kisses him, it’s with the soft sigh of one who’s finally found his way home.

Jensen doesn’t sleep that night, but as they come together again and again on Jensen’s bed, with Jared pressing into him, breathing words of love into Jensen’s mouth that Jensen repeats back without thought or reservation, it doesn’t matter much.

They never do get around to finishing that book, but that’s all right as well.

~*~

It starts the third week after Jensen moves in, but that’s not where it ends. Fifty years from now, Jensen will still suffer from insomnia, and Jared will still be right there to soothe him to sleep with a soft voice and tales older than they are. They’ll still make love in the home they’ve made for themselves in Vancouver, and they’ll still have two dogs that curl up by their feet when they sit in front of the fireplace.

You see, while every story may have a beginning, not every one has an ending. Only new places to begin again.

_“After all, tomorrow is another day.”_


End file.
